Why I Love Lester

his natural ability at getting a possibly difficult person such as Eno to just casually talk, “The person I did meet that day was relaxed, gracious, and, to use his favorite word, one of the most interesting conversationalists I'd run into in some time.” To establish his good moral standing, Lester demonstrates in the article that he was fully able to put his usual hedonist tendencies aside and act as a real writer and journalist, meticulously cataloguing a notoriously shadowy figure of pop culture, and is then able to demonstrate to the audience that even though he has his reservations about Eno and electronic music, his research proves that Eno is a serious musical mind, whatever medium he may choose to create his art.
Lester uses intimate distance in the article to acknowledge both his love of the work of Brian Eno as well as the overall importance of the man’s music in the modern era, thus arguing that electronics are a new and exciting form of popular music. His language illuminates the importance of Eno’s work and his place in society. He offers two opposing views of Eno’s work, one that his work is cold and distant, too depersonalized to be music, and the other than his music is more about spirituality and Zen-like qualities than it is melody and tone, thus a legitimate musical form. He writes, “Eno's work might be the ultimate sonic sartorial for the depersonalized, narcissistic sophisticate of the present and immediate future. But this refusal-- or inability-- to ultimately commit to anything in particular may well be what could ultimately prevent it from being great art. We live at the first time in human history when the basic humanity of a given piece of art might be considered suspect.” He then says that despite his or anyone else’s reservations, that Eno’s ability to create spiritually inclined music that is derived from technology will ultimately help people come to terms with technology easier, he writes, “Maybe he will ultimately help us all to make a more complete (and uncompromised) peace with all these machines which he perceives as machines of loving grace, as perhaps anyone as individualistic as himself would have to be repulsed by life in the hive. In a strange way, his music raises these issues in spite of itself; in the final analysis, not only Brian Eno's whole career but what might even be his real contribution to the human future could prove to be one huge happy accident.”
By using rhetorical methods, Bangs sheds light on Eno’s interesting character and unique contributions to music and art. He ultimately proves to the audience that whether they like technology or not, that technology will only advance and it naturally will affect music and art as well. He presents himself as a bold critic and social witness to the technology boom, and relates it directly to his love of music of which is becoming mechanized in the modern world, and uses the legend of Eno to prove that this isn’t a terrible occurrence.

Why I Love Lester

In his essay, “Brian Eno: A Sandbox in Alphaville”, Lester Bangs, arguably the greatest Rock n’ Roll writer of all time, uses ethical methods including doing the homework, establishing good character, and intimate distance in an attempt to demystify some of Brian Eno’s legend, and argue for the importance and place of electronics in modern music. Bangs conducts massive amounts of research and extensive interviews with the legendary producer, musical philosopher, and creator of the ambient music genre. Though at this time he was already the most respected critic in his field, Lester still uses some of the classic rhetorical means of establishing ethos in the essay.
In that way, he uses both forms of ethical proof: invented and situated. His situated ethos is the fact that at this point in his career he had already established himself as a unique and singular vision in the landscape of rock writing, and had to say little for people to take his opinion as gospel when it came to contemporary music. But, in the essay, Lester actually uses invented ethical proof as well. He used extensive research, cataloguing Eno’s music and career, as well as conducted numerous interviews with Eno himself; in an effort to the have the audience see him and the work from a true journalistic perspective. His extensive knowledge of Eno’s life and work as well as the casual dialog he developed with the man give credence to the face that though he was writing only about music, Lester was still a serious writer and social critic.
Lester clearly adheres to the rhetorical school of thought that a writer can only present themselves as intelligent through demonstrating that they have put in the time of doing the homework and the research. He presents himself in the first paragraph in the first person, meticulously listening to Eno’s music, even describing some of it and how it sounds to him, as well as meticulously researching the man.
Lester says, “The other day I was lying on my bed listening to Brian Eno's Music For Airports. The album consists of a few simple piano or choral figures put on tape loops which then run with variable delays for about ten minutes each, and is the first release on Eno's own Ambient label. Like a lot of Eno's "ambient" stuff, the music has a crystalline, sunlight-through-windowpane quality that makes it somewhat mesmerizing even as you only half-listen to it, Listing all the projects he's been involved with in his career so far is a bit like trying to enumerate the variegate colors and patterns on a lizard's back.” Lester continues on with a detailed description of Eno’s career to that point, and it is clear to the reader that he is more than familiar with the man’s music and his place in popular culture. One of the most fascinating things about Lester Bangs’ writing was that he never assumed. Though he could usually safely believe that he was often “preaching to the choir” when it came to his music essays, he always took the time to give the best, most concise, and least biased view of a musician that he could demonstrate (except when it came to Lou Reed evidently).
To further his credibility, Lester talks of the extremely casual and likeable relationship that he and Eno established through their interviews. By showing the audience that Lester, a man of infamous glutton and debauchery, could talk humbly and interestedly with Eno, a man of considerable prestige and academic appeal, he proves that he is both a common man and a man of intelligence that is truly interested in the issues at hand. He even admits his reservations to interviewing a man as prestigious as Eno, “I had been following his work for years, and just wanted to find out what kind of guy he was. I didn't expect much, really, or rather what I expected was either some narcissistic twit or more likely a character whose head was permanently lodged in the scientific/cybernetic/conceptual art clouds. Somebody who might be nice enough but was just a little too... ethereal.” But ultimately demonstrates

Birthday.

22 on the 22nd! It’s like a dream come true!

Well, actually, I just feel older, more worried that I am not doing anything with my life, and even more worried that teenaged apathy is spreading to my young adult years. I had a nightmare last night that my wonderfully thick and full hair magically fell out over night, the anxiety is killing me!

All in all things aren’t too bad. Been having lots of fun, writing a lot, listening to good music, blah blah. Checking the facebook all day to see who has written me happy birthday posts, I guess I am a text book narcissist, are most writers vein? I should ask a psychologist.

Extremely tired and ready for the week to be over, too much internship hooplah and journalism deadlines driving me over the edge. I need a drink, or something. My father will be in town tonight and he’ll be treated me and some closer friends of mine to dinner and booze. Do Americans, actually, do people, ever celebrate anything without food and booze? I can’t imagine turning 22 and not having a drink, which probably speaks volumes about my character, good thing I’m writing in on my internet blog where the entire world can see it!

I wish there was a concert I had desire to see tonight. Something loud, yet tuneful, no obscure noise or anything. I actually think Metallica would be an ideal birthday band, just do shots and listen to the amps blare “For whom the Bells Toll” would surely make me feel fulfilled for the year. I wonder if Hetfield or Lars has actually read “For Whom the Bells Toll”, they should, they might actually like it, got lots of nice violence. That Hemingway sure did have one dark conception of humanity.

I love how people always seem to care more about others’ birthdays than the actual person whose birthday it is. So many calls, the entire same thing, “22 on the 22nd!”, or, “Feeling old?” “No I’m not feeling fucking old I’m only 20!”, is generally what I’m thinking, but I generally write it off with a polite thanks. And the social networking sites are ridiculous! People wishing me a happy birthday that I haven’t talked to or thought of in years, and others who I flat out have never talked to! The only thing I’m thinking about is that I’ll be thirty in 8 years, and considering 14 doesn’t seem that long ago, I am truly not looking forward to it. I can almost guarantee that at 30 I’ll still wear Nike Dunks and Black Flag shirts, pathetic really. Hopefully then I’ll be a published writer, either that or I’ll have gotten my big break in the acting business, starring in the upcoming film version of “Blood Meridian” as the Kid. Oh, how I do love fantasies.

I just don’t want to lose my hair.

The Long Road Home; pt. 7

He walked into the car, it was freezing, and the windows were clouded with fog and ice. He was hungry, and tired. It had been months since he had a decent night’s sleep. Well, he wasn’t actually sure how long it was.
The ignition was shot. He spent what seemed like hours trying to chug the engine along into starting, the noise was starting to nauseate him. Finally, it started, and the warmth of the car heater brought peace to his mind and hearth to his body. He made his way off the exit, and onto the road. It was dark, and his lights were dimming out. He could barely see, and yet, he went on.
He popped some more amphetamines, all though the feeling of slight euphoria they gave him did not amount to the guilt he felt over taking them. He was tired of such a useless routine, and longed for something new. He drove forward, and sideways, the only sign of hope being the occasional traffic light, or an animal crossing the road.
About 100 miles down the road he stumbled upon a horrific accident. There were two cars; one was a large black sub that was sitting on its side in the middle of the road, and the other, a white convertible that had flipped onto the snow towards the left side of the road. There were not yet any police on arrival, and not an ambulance to ensure these people’s fate. The decision was his and his alone.
He saw a woman trying to escape from her window of the SUV. Her hand was severed, most likely from the broken glass of the windshield, and the blood loss was immense, spraying the black SUV with its effervescent glow. He leapt out of his car to help her.
“Please, help me sir,” she said, “My husband, he is stuck.”
He gazed inside the gar, and to his horror saw the man’s head sticking through the glass, pieces of it broken off and lodged in his exposed brains. He fought the urge to puke and gained his composure. The amphetamines turned out to be not such a bad idea after all.
“Listen Miss, we need to get you to a hospital,” he said.
“My husband,” she cried, “We’ve been married for 33 years, he can’t die.”
“I know, I know,” he said, “but please let me help you.”
He dragged her from the car as she shrieked hysterically. He removed his prized leather coat and used it to clot the blood flowing from the woman’s left wrist. He ran to his car and retrieved a bottle of vicodin, a fifth of vodka, and a first aid kit.
“Here, please take these, it’ll numb” the pain,” he said, “both kinds.”
She lay back, and he fed her three pills, and had her tilt her head slightly so he could use the booze to wash them back, she made a distasteful gesture with her face as the harsh warm vodka warmed her and calmed her.
“Thank you,” she said, “you’re kind, you might now know it yet, but you’re kind.”
The woman’s face was losing color, and it was then he noticed a far more serious wound in her belly, a large piece of glass that had wedged itself between her ribs. He tried to dress it up with gauze. It was too late. The woman coughed blood and her eyes rolled into her head, and she sat there in his arms, lifeless, and at peace.
The man saw headlights coming into his vision. He had forgotten about the car on the side of the road, but it didn’t matter.
A large man stepped out of the ambulance, and approached him. He looked at the lifeless woman sitting in his arms.
“There was nothing you could have done,” he said, “But this woman will be eternally grateful for what you tried to do.”
Then, he cried.

Mandatory Blog 1

We, writers, are familiar with the ancient rhetoricians and their belief that an argument is not complete unless appealing to ethos, the speaker’s credibility, or logos, the issue itself. But as Aristotle states`, there is a third intrinsic proof, pathos, the appeal to powerful human emotions. As English speakers, we think of the term “pathetic” as a grand insult for the most pitiful of behaviors, but taken strongly, the term literally means to arouse powerful emotions.
Aristotle stated three specific criteria for emotional appeal to be used as intrinsic proof within a piece. First, one must understand the state of mind of people who are angry, indignant, or joyful; second, they need to understand who is capable of arousing such emotions within people; and third, they must understand the reasons for which people become emotional. In his essay “Under the Influence” of which details the powerful effect a father’s alcoholism has on his son, Scott Russell Sanders adheres to all three criteria and creates a powerful essay that is sure to leave a lasting impression on even the most passive of readers.
He begins his essay with, “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food-compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense not because my father quit drinking but because he quit living. That is how the story ends for my father, age sixty-four, heart bursting, body cooling and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother’s trailer.” Clearly, without even really making a solid effort to do so, Sanders elicits a strong response in the reader. It is clear that the writer’s father and his voracious drinking had lasting psychological damage on him. By just evoking painful memories, we are able to sympathize with a man who isn’t directly asking for our sympathy.
Clearly he demonstrates the ability to understand human emotions, and because are emotions are generally affected by direct stimuli, it is known that those we care about, our friends and more so our family, have more bearing on our emotions than others. Sanders is talking about his father, the man that arguably shapes the young adult male (in many cases) more than any other person, and the debilitating psychological baggage that his father’s binge-drinking brought on. Sanders writes, “I lie there hating him, loving him, fearing him, knowing I have failed him.” He details the complex and confused emotions that occur from such a difficult experience as watching a loved and trusted family member destroy himself with booze. His father’s drinking was able to simultaneously make feel angry, helpless, and guilty, all while still being able to project love onto his father. These internal conflicts of facing a plethora of emotions brought on by a single event can relate to any human being as we are all faced with conflicting and confusing emotions, thus, he is able to directly relate to the reader even if he/she might not have any experience with alcoholism.
By appealing to the reader’s emotions, Sanders is able to make a highly convincing argument against alcoholism. By telling his own story of his father’s booze addiction he is also able to establish ethos, as a known talented writer and a man with personal experience in the matter, he clearly is able to come off as someone well-versed in the issue. Just to strengthen his argument, he even offers statistical numbers as to the vastly high rates of alcoholism in the United States. By using such grand emotional appeal, Sanders successfully elicits a strong response from the reader and makes a highly powerful statement of the social dilemma of alcoholism and its effect on the children of alcoholic parents.

The Long Road Home; pt.6

He re-entered the lobby with the intention of checking out.
He approached the register, and the hotel manager was sitting in his chair, ignoring a phone call, and clipping his toenails.
“I need to head out,” said the man.
The manager looked up and raised his left eyebrow, revealing a glass eye, hollow and white.
“You most certainly do,” said the manager, “but I don’t think it’s quite your time, you have a long ways ahead of you before you ever escape.”
“Escape?” said the man.
“I meant head out,” replied the manager, “In any case, its only 25 dollars a night, and since you haven’t stayed here but three hours, it’ll be 25 dollars anyways.”
The man reached into his back pocket, it was empty, no wallet, no cash, nothing. He realized he left it in the woman’s room, and he was damned if he was going to make that visit ever again.
“I, uh, I seem to have lost my wallet,” said the man, “is there some form of collateral I can offer you?”
The manager’s glass eye was gleaming, and his hardened face momentarily tensed, before giving way to his generally calm veneer, “Well, I generally only accept hard currency, but there are some exceptions for those that I find……., intriguing.”
“Intriguing?” he asked, before realizing what it was about him that made him so, he re-focused on the task at hand; getting back to the road.
“Well, what kind of promise do you require?” said the man.
“You must promise to keep hopeful,” said the man, “hope is the only power you have left, and without it you will never again know the beauty of love or the magic of passion,” said the manager.
The man had no idea what this kind but strange manager meant, and he made very little effort to decipher the meaning. He stood for a moment trying to read the manager’s facial expressions. The manager was staring directly into him, he knew him.
“I can do that,” said the man.
“Do what?” said the manager.
“Remain hopeful.”
“Promise me feller; promise me that you will keep hope.”
The man, true to judicial fashion, raised his hand, crossed his heart, and said, “I promise that I will remain hopeful.”
The manager nodded approvingly, and reached out to shake the man’s hand. Their hands met, and they stood there in silent cordiality. As the man was ready to turn away, he noticed a tear streaming down the manager’s left half of his face, but paid little attention to it, and finally broke free of that miserable existence of a motel.
As he walked out, it was dark. He made his way to his car, and felt something of an epiphany. He realized that prior to his encounters with the woman and the manager, he had no hope, he was drifting through this false reality of a life, but his conversation with the man re-invigorated him with hope and passion, and he was ready for something new. He knew he was almost there, but the question was how would he get there?

Top 5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature pt. 5; Iago

Save the best for last indeed.

Iago is till this day, what I consider the greatest villain in all of literature. He is in many ways the very first portrayal of, or at least the best earliest of the most remembered, a classic psychopath in literature. He is Shakespeare’s most sinister villain, only rivaled by Lady Macbeth and Edmund from King Lear. Iago is a Machiavellian schemer and liar, expertly manipulating all the characters in the play, and most notably Othello himself, while maintaining his reputation as an honest and decent advisor. His cunning is very little rivaled in literature. He is even referred to in the play as “Honest Iago”, denoting that not only do other people believe his lies, but they often think of him as the person most worthy of their trust. Shakespearean critic A.C. Bradley has said, “Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago.”

For those of you whom aren’t familiar with the play, well first off, get familiar, to me it’s his greatest achievement, a massive entangled web of lies and hatred all stemming around the relationship between Othello, the novel but corruptible soldier, and Iago, the manipulative and sadistically jealous advisor. Iago and Othello are longtime soldiers who have fought together for years. At the beginning, Iago tells the audience he has been unfairly passed over for promotion to lieutenant to Cassio. Iago plans to have Othello demote Cassio, and eventually cause Othello’s total destruction. Iago does have an ally in Roderigo, a dim-witted and easily-fooled insignificant, who helps Iago under the false pretenses that once Othello is gone, Othello’s wife Desdemona will be with Roderigo.

There is no one able to lie so masterfully as Iago in all of literature. First, he sets into motion a drunken brawl that ensures Cassio’s demotion, and begins on his real scheme. He will leas Othello to believe Desdemona is sleeping with Cassio. He cons his wife, Emilia, into stealing a handkerchief that Othello had given her, and tells Othello that he had seen it in Cassio’s possession. Othello suitably flies into maddening jealousy, and Iago tells him to hide behind the curtains while he talks to Cassio. He leads Cassio into a rather explicit conversation about Cassio’s mistress, Bianca, but leads Othello it is about Desdemona. Othello is stricken with grief, and orders Iago to murder Cassio. Instead, he lets his ally Roderigo fight Cassio, and murders Roderigo while Cassio is only wounded. Iago’s plans imminently succeed when Desdemona is murdered by Othello. Nevertheless, Iago’s wife brings his treachery to light and he is arrested at the end of the play.

The most study of Iago has had to deal with his motives, and why he felt such need to wreak such horrible havoc on the other characters’ lives, and many scholars felt he did this for no real reason other than that he good, making him a classic misanthropic sociopath. Samuel Taylor Coleridge described Iago’s motives as “motiveless malignity”, meaning he sought to destroy the other characters for no personal gain. In Act 1, Iago presents his motives as bitterness over being passed for promotion and his racist hatred over Othello, a black man, being with Desdemona, a white woman. But, many would seem to find these excuses to little more than classic sociopathic rationalizations and his real reason is his supreme confidence in his ability to destroy Othello and escape arrest or suspicion. Iago only presents his true evil nature in his asides to the audience, and presents himself as charismatic, witty, and charming to the other characters, also hinting at a sociopathic nature. He even offers sound advice to both Othello and Cassio. In any case, there are few characters like Iago, and he is very much a metaphor for the destructive nature of jealousy itself. We are never told what Iago is like before the play, and due to his status as celebrated soldier he was most likely heroic, but his ambitions turned to human destruction driven by petty jealousy. He is without guilt, and revels in the mayhem he has caused. Some say that he is a representation of the darker side of Othello himself, that little voice in the back of our heads telling us that our lovers don’t really love us. He is a manifestation of human hatred and malignity, and this is why he is the greatest evil in all of literature; he is an evil we all can identify with.

Top 5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature pt. 4; Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson's "the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is to this day the greatest fictional portrayal of split personality disorder ever written. The story is particularly frightening because Dr. Jekyll is a kind and benveolent man noted for his numerous good deeds, and it is because he tries so hard to live up to this good persona that an absolutely malevolently evil and sadistic persona forms within that same personality, essentially with Mr. Hyde taking over Dr. Jekyll completely. The book is left ambiguous, and we are never explicitly told what Jekyll does when he becomes Hyde at night, though it was certainly something of a depraved and immoral nature. In my mind, I always felt Stephenson was trying to hint at a bloodlust for prostitutes. The fact that Jekyll takes the potion to become Hyde also hints that he feels that as Hyde he is allowed to engage in immoral activities that a doctor of his stature would never be able to get away with freely. It is most likely that Dr. Jekyll has this evil in him at all times, but it is the potion that only gives him the courage to do something that he feels constantly a need to do, such as when he killed the benevolent Sir Danvers in the streets of London for no other personal gain than the thrill of the kill.

Freud believed that our unconcious repressed thoughts have massive influence on our concious thoughts. Dr. Jekyll was trying so hard to repress his evi side, or his bad self, that all of us have within us, that an actual seperate and malevolent personality was formed to act out these darker urges. If someone repressed all thier dark urges to the unconcious mind than these urges can manifest unconciously, thus creating a Mr. Hyde like dual personality. The book is terrifying because Dr. Hyde/Mr. Jekyll is a representation of both pure good and pure evil. The failure to accept the tension of duality between good and evil is related to Victorian Theology in that Satan was banished to hell for failing to accept that he was a created being and not in fact God.

Top 5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature pt 3; Alex DeLarge

Alex from Anthony Burgess's novel "A Clockwork Orange" is one of the most entertaining and charming psychopathic charachters ever to be put to written word. He is sadistically violent, portrayed as someone who murders, robes, and rapes for little more than personal bemusement. For him the kill is the motive, hurting someone is the end. Ironically, he is also the protagonist of the book, acting as somewhat of the perfect anti-hero. He is the novel only 15 years old and already very seasoned in delinquent behavior. He leads a small gang called the Droogs, and he is the youngest member of the group, though he is portrayed as far more intelligent and vicious than his buddies and comes up with the majority of their sick tirades. As an intellectual, he knows his actions are inherently wrong, though because of a deep seeded need to destroy he doesn't feel any real remorse over his actions. He is most definitely a classic psychopath.

Even though he is a sadistic killer, the reader at times finding themselves enjoying Alex's many quirks, and in some ways it wouldn't be surprising if the reader would at some point come to like Alex. He speaks with a strange dialect created by Burgess called Nadsat, teenage slang based on some English and Russian words. He is enormously witty. He likes to drink milk that is laced with various stimulants, most likely methamphetamines, as well as psychedelics. He has a passion for Classical music, especially Beethoven. There is a scene in the book where he passionately listens to Beethoven and goes into deep and detailed fantasies of torture and rape, bringing him to the point of orgasm.

When Alex is eventually sold out by his friends to the police (they got sick of his arrogant manner), he is sentenced to a unique form of aversion therapy. Alex is injected with a drug and becomes violently ill, and then exposed to scenes of rape and murder. He is then not even able to fantasize about hurting people without experiencing the same symptoms. He is let out of prison, but still wholly unable to integrate himself back into society. He runs into old friends and enemies, all who mercilessly beat him, with Alex not even able to defend himself. The climax comes when Alex runs into the writers who's wife he had raped, the assault of which resulted in her death by some unnamed illness. The writer is able to make this connection after hearing Alex sing, "Singin in the Rain", the same tune he hummed when he raped his wife. The writer drugs Alex and locks him in a room, making him listen to the ninth symphony, the sound of also makes Alex incredibly ill. Alex attempts to commit suicide by jumping out of the house, but instead wakes up in the hospital, with the illness apparently subsided. He instantly reverts to his evil self, fantasizing of torture and murder. The novel ends on an ambiguous note, with a 21 year old Alex working a government job and fantasizing about starting a family. Alex represents the futility of trying to reform violent criminals, as his nature is deep rooted and unchangeable. The end of the novel shows that it was only boredom that was able to make Alex grow out of his psychopathy, but even then he is left with sinister urges.

The Long Road Home; pt. 5

He was tired. For so long he had no where to go and no idea where he was going. She took her clothes off, and sat on the bed. The room reeked of alcohol and bad sex. He noticed dried blood on the wall beside the television set. He felt disturbed, but the scenario seemed all too familiar too him.
“Uh, maybe we can just get some coffee, or something,” he said.
She looked at him with a cold and castrating glare, “You drag me all the way up here and you’re not even going to get it done.”
He felt emasculated. He noticed a fifth of whiskey on a sink at the side of the room. He poured himself a drink. The warmth and comfort of the alcohol soothed his mind, and he decided to go through with the act.
He approached her at the bed, and kissed her. She pushed him away, “None of that,” she said.
He didn’t understand her hesitance. She did not want any emotions; this was purely for satisfaction, or even comfort. He had no problem with this, and he took his time taking his pants off.
“Do it,” she said.
He slid his hands between her legs. She was undeniably sexy, skin smooth and milky, like an actress in an old Film Noir. She remained silent, and he wondered if he was doing it right, it had been a while. She grabbed his penis, making him painfully aware of his total lack of an erection.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said.
He was humiliated. His face wore a color of red generally associated with blood. He simply couldn’t feel. He wanted to be alive, to give this strange and exotic woman comfort, but he lacked the courage and fortitude to be fully engaged in the act of love. Or maybe, there was something else to the situation.
She kicked him out of bed and he swiftly put his clothes back on. She put on the television, flipping through the channels, and stopped when she noticed “Casablanca” being played on AMC.
“Life is never like this,” she said.
“It can be,” he said, “some people can live like that, but we are of a dead generation.”
“Don’t get fucking philosophical on me,” she said, “I can’t even get a decent lay out of a useless prick like you.”
He felt suddenly violent. He wanted to lunge at her, but she was of such inconsequence to him that the feelings of hurt vanished as if they were never there to begin with.
“Get the fuck out,” she said.
He walked towards the doorway, and looked at her one last time. She lay there, mouthing along to Humphrey, “Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
He opened the door, and gazed into the abyss. Then, he walked back into the darkness, and made his way to the road.

5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature pt. 2; Lady Macbetj

This article is referring to Lady Macbeth in the first two acts of the play, but mainly the first, as she eventually takes her life out of guilt, displaying at least some kind of remorse for her actions.

I've always found Lady Macbeth to be one of Shakespeare's most fascinating characters. She is in many ways a Femme Fatale, the way she tempts Macbeth to commit the heinous act of murder for her own personal gain and Macbeth's eventual destruction, but she is also kind of de-sexified. Many critics have talked about her being an "anti-mother", especially for the part in the play when she asks to be de-sexed and of course the infamous line about wanting to bash in the brains of the baby who sucks from her breast. These lines were particularly hideous for early Modern England, a country with mother issues anyways (they still have a queen yknow). She wants power, and wants to take it with dominance usually associated with males in Shakespeare. But, she her power is still maternal, acting as a guide for Macbeth's tremendously powerful ambition. She brings us images of motherhood, but they are evil and destructive images. When she wants to be un-sexed, I have always felt she was asking to have the rotten feelings of human compassion stripped away from her, as those emotions are usually associated with maternity.

Many critics say Lady Macbeth is a classic witch. Critic Joanna Levin defines a witch as a woman that succumbs to satanic force, a lust for the devil, and who, either for this reason or the desire to obtain supernatural powers, invokes (evil) spirits. Lady Macbeth conjures the evil spirits, "the three witches", that show Macbeth his path that leads him to murder and eventually self--destruction. She uses her lust for supernatural power as a means of getting ahead of Macbeth, and also attacks his masculinity, making her the dominant force in the relationship. Her desire is absolute power, and she seeks to attain that goal in a single minded fashion. To me, Lady Macbeth is act one only is beaten by Othello's Iago (I'll get to him soon) in terms of Shakespeare's most sinister characters.

Correction

The previous article is about "Judge Fowler" and not "Judge Archon" as I repeatedly called him. I was tired and wrote the article in a hurry and was thinking about the end of the article when I argued that Fowler could be a sort of gnostic archon. In any case, very sloppy, my apologies.

5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature; part. 1

I've been thinking about whom are the most evil charachters in all of literature are. It took me a while to narrow it down, but here's what I came up with.

Number 5

Judge Archon from Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” is one of the most disturbing and unabashedly evil characters from all of literature. For those unfamiliar with the novel, in the bulk of it depicts a real historical gang of scalp-hunters who raped, robbed, and massacred Native Americans through the Mexico-United States borderlands in 1849 and 1850. Judge Archon, also a real historical figure, bands the man of the Clanton Gang together and leads them on a journey of despicable torture, sadism, and murder.
Judge Archon acts as the leader of the gang along with John Joel Glanton. He at first appears as a very mysterious character. He is massive, well over 7 feet tall and capable of welding a battle cannon as if it were a simple rifle, he is also totally pale and completely bereft of body hair, giving him an inhuman appearance. He is described as unscrupulous and violent, and is totally devoted to conflict and the destruction of innocent life. Throughout the novel he kills countless people, including children. He is extremely intelligent, and has what seems like a supernatural level of knowledge and skills, yet doesn’t seem to exude any sort of formal education. His skills are seemingly self-taught, and he uses these skills to weld dominance over other humans. He claims in the novel that his only goal is total power; he wishes to weld this total power in a world where there are other powerful men.
Judge Archon is a manifestation of pure evil, an embodiment of everything wrong with the human condition. He has no motive other than the destruction of innocence. He kills in cold blood, and gets more than just a little satisfaction out of it, for him the kill is the only satisfaction. McCarthy also implied in the novel that he may be a pedophile. Aside from the children that he openly kills, there are also scenes that depict him enticing young children with sweets, and many times in the novel children go missing when he is in the area. His murders of children to him resemble the ultimate destruction of innocence. He is not a typical psychopath as is portrayed in modern cinema and literature. He doesn’t have any interest in appearing to those around him as cunning or charming, he makes no bones about what he is. He is a ruthless killer devoid of any conscience. Even scarier is the fact that he is not insane; he is clear and concise in his motives, if there are any.
Throughout “Blood Meridian”, many might start to wonder about Archon’s stance as “human”. Whereas the other members of the gang seem to age, Archon doesn’t, his appearance remains the same throughout a whole 30 year span. The novel’s “protagonist”, the Kid, begins to feel horrible guilt for the vicious crimes he committed throughout his tenure on the Clanton gang. The Judge feels no guilt, and in the final scene with the Kid, he talks about almost missing those days. His speed, strength, and stamina all appear to be superhuman. Indeed, towards the end of the novel, Archon is described more explicitly as superhuman, maybe even a demonic entity or the concept of evil personified.
In his essay "Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy", literature professor Leo Daugherty argued that McCarthy's Holden is, or at least embodies, a Gnostic archon, a kind of demon. McCarthy has often been viewed as a Gnostic writer, Gnosticism believing in one divine being or creator, basically God. The Archons are entities who act to separate humanity from god, while mirroring humanity itself. Many Archons are likened to Christian angels, pure good, while the others are Christian demons, pure evil. Judge Holden is one of the most fascinatingly evil characters throughout literature, as he stands as something more than human while mirroring humanity’s darkest aspects simultaneously.

The Long Road home part 3

They walked upstairs to the long lonely stairway corridor. The stairs winded for what seemed like an eternity, and he felt as if they might be stuck in the upwards vortex for all eternity, yet he didn’t seem to mind. He looked at her from behind, following her; she was beautifully shaped, long legs and firm hips, a midsection made for love. And yet, he couldn’t smell her, and he barely even longed to taste her. He didn’t understand the point of following her, and yet he continued to do so. He felt rats skitter under his feet, startling him, almost making him fall backward into the abyss he felt as he had spent his entire life trying to climb out of. Maybe this was all there was. There was the stench of death in the air, like burning jasmine leaves through a mid summer’s drought, beauty lost. And beauty was lost. As he looked at the beautiful girl he was following he didn’t recognize beauty, only a hallow shape of a well endowed female.
They finally reached the top of the winding stairs.
“Cmon,” she said, “My room is just up the way.”
He noticed the wallpaper coming off the walls, the humidity causing the cheap brand paper to lose its stick; it smelled something awful, like a sweaty obese man refusing to take a shower. And yet, he followed. He wasn’t sure if he was following her for sex, for love, or for no reason at all. He didn’t remember what love felt like, and he was sure he remembered that he liked the feeling of sex, but he felt as if he didn’t deserve such bodily pleasures. He tried to remember the feeling, but his mind was blank, he had tried to forget himself for so long that he didn’t know the difference between consciousness and sleep. He was in a state of drift, drifting through life (was he alive?) and drifting through death, a no man’s land through the ugliest depths of the human consciousness. The hallway seemed longer than the corridor, and as he walked past the rooms every sound revealed its own ugly scene. He heard screams in one room, and laughs, a woman pining her way for freedom against a ruthless assaulter. He put his ear to the door, and heard the vicious cracks of bones and the maniacal laughter. He wanted to help, but he didn’t see how he could. He heard sniffs and sighs in one room, and then nothing in another. He was clearly not alone in this cruel existence.
“We’re here,” she said.
“Where are we?” he said.
“Here, yknow, my home.”
“You live here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it living, would you?”
He was bewildered by the question, and yet he thought he instinctively knew the answer. Hesitantly, he followed her in to the tight doorway, and shut the door behind him with a powerful thud.

The Long Road Home; pt. 3

He gazed at the room with bewilderment and yet a curious sense of wonder. He felt more whole in this shady dive than he had for years in his own home. Anonymity was something he strived for. He took a sip from his cold perspiring beer and took in the enchantedly lifeless scene. He saw her across the bar. He felt enthralled; she wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but nevertheless she exuded mysterious sensuality and her very presence felt seductive. He ordered two shots, one for liquid courage, and another for luck. They hit his empty stomach hard, the bile almost peaking to the surface, but only held down by the knots in his stomach, making him aware of emotions he’d long forgotten how to feel.
As he approached her he became aware of the wild pattering rhythm of his heart, giving life to a dead organ. This is life. As he stood beside her, he could not catch even the slightest hint of acknowledgement or emotion on her face, suggesting she too had been on the road as long as him, or she was just illustrating a carefully constructed persona. Her hair was long, down to her middle back, and jet black, darker than the room itself. Eyes of ice; crystal blue, penetrating and alarming, and lips so red and full he thought they surely could not exist.
“Im, uh…, can I buy you a drink?” he said.
“I already have one, you can clearly see that?”
She clearly was in disdain of the courting rituals as much as he, though she had gone on to abandon them all together, in favor of cold and distant relations that seemed so much real and human to the both of them. The modernist world does not require romance, in a cold and distant world the only rational behavior is to also remain cold and distant, unchangeable.
“What’s your name?”, he said, clearly aware of the futility and pointlessness of the question.
“It doesn’t matter what my name is, and I don’t want to know your name either,” she said, “Names do not have relevance in this dimension that we exist in, but I can see you’re attracted to me, so if you like, you can sit here and drink with me.”
“Ok, what are you drinkin?” he said.
“Dry gin”, she said, with her face resembling lady liberty, unchanging and stone.
They sat there and did not talk much, and when they did speak, they only spoke of the road. Their life previous to the road only held significance in that it eventually brought them to this long and never-ending cycle. Were they even human anymore? He dazed off and imagined the silliness of the word “human” being explicative of emotion and passion, as nearly every human he came across was a creature with no emotion or passion, just drifting through the days. St. Augustine thought purgatory was bad, but he clearly had never lived in the post-modern era.
“Many are freed from the prison of hell ... through the good works of the living and the Church's prayers for them, most of all through the unbloody sacrifice, which is offered on certain days for all the living and the dead.”
She looked bored, she gazed into him and evoked the chills he felt when he first saw someone dead.
“You’ve been good, we can go upstairs if you like.”